Lincoln St. Bridge Project A Must For City

The 11th-hour debate over the Lincoln Street bridge offers another example of the destructive mindset Spokane must overcome as it wrestles to define itself for the 21st century.

The debate about the bridge is poised to turn down a most familiar Spokane pathway worn smooth by naysayers, second-guessers and impoverished thinkers.

A certain drumbeat can be heard from those quarters: the bridge was dreamed up by an insensitive City Council; the bridge is an expensive boondoggle that isn’t needed; the bridge will ruin the gem of Spokane, namely, the river gorge in the center of town.

This is the old Spokane mindset at its finest, or worst.

If left unchallenged, this mindset will keep killing off good projects, keep wearing down innovative people, and keep Spokane stuck in the 1970s.

Before these old tapes get played again and the political leadership wavers or folds its tent on the Lincoln Street Bridge, citizens and politicans need to muster the courage to consider the possibilities the bridge opens up.

Don’t be paranoid, for once.

Get out of the think-small mentality.

The demonizing of the Lincoln Street bridge is wrong. Bridges aren’t, by definition, blights. From the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, they have been focual points of community pride and inspiration.

The reality is that a new bridge must be built, given the fact that our automobile-based population is growing and the decrepit Post Street bridge is a high priority for replacement.

Honestly, issues related to traffic, costs and public participation in the development of the Lincoln Street bridge already have been resolved.

Traffic crossing the new bridge will move at 25 to 30 miles per hour, the same posted speeds as traffic currently moves on downtown thoroughfares. The bridge is not a freeway and will not significantly wall off any part of downton.

The bridge is an incredible bargain. Of the total cost of $36 million, at least $27 million will come from federal and state dollars. A new, smoothly paved, uncongested bridge across the Spokane River is possible for a local outlay of less than $10 million.

Public discussion of this project was long and thorough. In 1992 and 1993, a citizens advisory board met dozens of times to look at alternatives and set some guidelines for what the bridge should be. The public said it wanted a simple, elegant bridge built in harmony with the natural and human environment.

That’s the bridge ready to be built. There isn’t a problem with traffic flow, or costs, or citizen involvement.

The problem is that Spokane chronically has difficulty seeing the possibility of creating something better than what we have.

That’s what the Lincoln Street bridge could be: a signature architectural landmark and civic treasure for the 21st century.

Sure, opponents are right to be concerned about the Spokane River gorge and access to it.

They are flat wrong to the point of being irresponsible to suggest this bridge will adversely impact the gorge or downtown.

The Lincoln Street bridge project, as a whole, provides the most important enhancement of public access to, and appreciation for, the Spokane River in the last 20 years.

On the north side of the river, for example, the bridge project will turn what is now a gravel parking area into a grassy, landscaped extension of Veterans Court, offering great places to picnic and view the river.

On the south side, the project will result in green space around City Hall, green space around the planned new Nordstrom building, and the city library. Plus, the project fixes the crazy and life-threatening traffic pattern around the library and the Monroe Street Bridge.

The bridge project greatly enhances access to the Centennial Trail. The old Post Street Bridge will be replaced with a pedestrian walkway providing not only a new trailhead, but also 21-foot-wide viewing area of the falls with seats and lights.

The Lincoln Street bridge itself will provide the most spectacular pedestrian viewpoints anywhere along the river gorge.

Eight-foot walkways will line both sides of the new bridge. The walkways will be punctuated with four viewing galleries, each 16 feet deep and 45 feet long, where people can stand and look at the river in both directions.

With the new bridge standing tall above the water and the new Centennial Trail bridge resting low, the vista upstream to the main falls of the Spokane River will be less obstructed than it has been in 100 years.

It’s time to take a step beyond Expo ‘74.

It is time, finally, to embrace a project that dares to look forward, rather than back.

When completed, the Lincoln Street bridge project will be a landmark, a must-see place where people can go to take in the river and feel proud of Spokane. Oh, and it will be easier to get to downtown, too.

That is if the old mind set of “we can’t do it, we don’t want it” doesn’t prevail.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the editor of The Spokesman-Review, His column appears each Sunday on Perspective.